it's been a while since I was on this forum and in that time I have been playing around with other OSes, the end result: aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!

Good thing Puppy is so stable and reliable. My main OS is Puppy slacko 5.x, up to 5.5 now, great new release, love it.

I've also installed Macpup 5.2.9 and still have Slacko 5.4 installed as well. These are all frugal installs on HD of my HP Presario v2000 laptop. They all just install so easily and run so well, why would we look elsewhere??

I keep asking myself the same thing, the answer I come up with is: cos I can! Oh, I hate challenges.

Anyway, enough rambling, to my questions:
1/ I've installed VectorLinux 7 and when I updated Grub4dos on my Puppy 5.5, it showed up as Fatdog64, can anyone tell me why??

2/ I've also installed Snowlinux 4 (glacier). Grub4dos gets the name right but I can't get either of them to boot, at least not without a kernel panic.

I'm still a bit green when it comes to Linux and especially grub so I need to find the step by step, 'this is what you look for and where you look' kind of advice to fix some things.

I have successfully installed Knoppix 7.0.5 and am able to boot it from the menu.lst but even there, each time I update the menu.lst with grub4dos, it loses the needed boot options/parameters to make it boot. Good thing it is just a copy and paste to restore that one.

So, can anyone help me find what I need to get Vector and Snow to boot? The info on the screen when the kernel panic has occurred doesn't mean a lot to me yet. I'd be very appreciative of any help, thanks in advance.

Also, if I've posted in the wrong section, please forgive me and point me in the right direction, thanks. I have done a substantial amount of searching for answers to the second question particularly and found it all very confusing, hope you understand. I know from my earlier queries and posts that you are a very helpful and patient bunch of people. If anyone knows of any forum posts in any forum that might help, that would be appreciated as well.

If I haven't given enough info, please ask and I'll supply what I can. Thanks again.Edited_time_total

I don't use Grub4dos (in my tests it wouldn't boot anything except Puppy without a lot of experimenting) so I boot everything with good old Legacy Grub. I seem to recall that the old Legacy Grub entries will work in Grub4dos so here is my Grub entry for Vector 7.0.

that worked a treat, my entry was almost there, in fact there was too much information, grub4dos had added a couple of unnecessary options, I got rid of them and it worked. The only thing is that it booted into the command line but I'll check the VL forums for answers to that one, at least I can get it started now, thanks heaps.

I'll see how that goes with the SnowLinux install and keep everyone posted.

Well, for any who have been watching this thread, I now have 3 puppies and 3 other non-puppy distros, all bootable, on my hd. Thanks, James, for your help in sorting the booting issue for Vector Linux which helped with the entry for SnowLinux.

Now that that is solved, I'll mark that soon, can anyone tell me why the Vector Linux first showed up as Fatdog64??? Got me beat, it's not even based on Puppy, ASAIK.

killapup: Just to clarify - your problems are not with Grub4Dos per se. They are with Puppy's Grub4Dos Bootloader Config program.

This program scans the partitions of your hard drive, looking for Linux installs. It then makes some educated guesses about how they should boot, and builds a menu.

This procedure works well with Puppies. In my tests, it also correctly identifies the Ubuntu variants that now use GRUB2. But it isn't perfect.

I did a test install of Vector Linux and it uses the old LILO bootloader. So G4DBLC guesses wrong. Here's why it thinks that the install is Fatdog:

Fatdog has a core file named initrd, unlike Puppy which uses initrd.gz. As a courtesy to the the Fatdog project, G4DBLC assumes that the presence of the initrd file is a marker for Fatdog. Unfortunately, Vector also uses this file!

Here is a tip for multi-booting various Linuxes. Most (all?) of them give you a choice of where to install the bootloader - either on the hard drive's MBR or in the boot sector of the install partition. If you use the latter, your install is completely self contained. You can then boot it from GRUB using a chainloader command.

Read here for an alternative to G4DBLC. I used this method with Vector and it booted correctly.

I'm still learning about Linux and am very green about Grub....... but it is fun trying. Thanks for the referral to the Grub Legacy article, you obviously have a good grasp on it. So, on that, is it worth redoing the boot loader using Grub Legacy instead of Grub4dos? Or am I just asking for trouble changing midstream?? Or is it really worth my while making the change now to save myself more grief later on?

Thanks, too, for checking out why the Fatdog showed up, I can understand that now to some extent. I know that the Snowlinux install uses initrd.img with a version number and 'generic' at the end and my bootloader list has to include the whole thing, but at least it boots.

I did see the LILO bootloader step in the install of Vector but I skipped that one, intending to use Grub4dos.

Anyway, thanks again for all the help, no doubt I'll be back, cheers all,

So, on that, is it worth redoing the boot loader using Grub Legacy instead of Grub4dos?

Here is the only issue with relying on tools like Grub4Dos Bootloader Config. If you add a new OS to your system and re-run G4DBLC, it will make the same wrong guesses as before. You will need to repair your menu.lst again.

But once you understand how OS's install their bootloaders, you can just add a new entry to your current menu.lst.

I did a test setup of eight different Linuxes. In each case, I instructed the installer to put its bootloader in its own partition boot sector instead of the MBR. I then added a standard entry to my primary menu.lst running out of a Puppy. I never had to re-install GRUB. They all booted correctly.

Could someone tell me where to find the menu.lst from a Puppy Linux Grub4Dos installation. With just a Grub installation I know it was in the Boot/Grub folder. But there's no text files in that folder in the Grub4Dos.

I have four. One swap, one windows, then two Linux. The Grub4dos is installed by a Puppy Linux utility. That partition, when opened off the icon, shows a boot/grub file with just system icons and no text files.

On the other linux (Mepis) I have a regular boot/grub folder that has a menu.lst in it. That application had installed a grub boot loader at the end of the OS installation. It wouldn't boot the Puppy linux, though. So I used the live CD for the Puppy and installed the Grub4Dos, but that one wouldn't boot the Mepis.

So, I copied the grub listing for the Mepis to an outside media (external hardrive via usb), then installed the Grub4Dos, and exchanged the Mepis listing from the Grub for the Grub4Dos at the installation end of the latter. That shows an Edit the menu.lst. Now everything boots, but I was wanting to get the Mepis splash screen at the start. I should have made a copy of the menu.lst then, but thought I could find it. I can still go back and redo everything.

If I can't get it done, it's not a big deal I have everything booting and the whole thing is more of educating myself on the linux systems. It's a lot of fun. This project is on a desktop. The main OS I use is the Puppy Linux on a couple of laptops. Those I use as work units so I've come to be a real fan of the Puppy Linux Distros.

The Mepis and Puppy partition icons are the only ones that show the boot/grub folder. I'm not finding a grldr file anywhere. I'm currently booting from the Grub4Dos.